My experience is, I do a table reading, and it's literally like it's written in colossal neon lights what's wrong with the screenplay.
Rewriting isn't just about dialogue; it's the order of the scenes, how you finish a scene, how you get into a scene.
Scene study is isolated. I suppose it's interesting, but I don't think it really teaches you about a throughline. A throughline is something you feel when you do one scene followed by another followed by another.
When you have good writing, the rhythm of the scene is very apparent. What the scene demands is very clear.
When you have quick scenes, it becomes difficult to ascertain where your character fits and where they're going. I always enjoy scenes that have a movement to them.
The great thing about making an ensemble show is it becomes modular. It might work on the page to cut from one scene to another, but on the screen, it's more powerful to take that second scene and move it first or move it later.
Any director, if you really ask them, will tell you that the toughest thing to do is like a dinner table or a dialogue scene, because you need to keep that electricity maintained throughout the course of the film.
I don't write tracking shots in my screenplays or any camera directions, but I do try to give a sense of how the action is moving.
It's rare that scenes last more than 2 or 3 minutes, so sound helps segue from one scene to another.
